The Need for Restructuring....

Balance. Balance. Balance.

To the extent that the current form of our Government has lost its sense of balance (being kind enough to assume that it was there in theory to being with...) it is failing us. Numerous examples serve to support this claim; I personally feel that the support need not be repeated, especially since it is quite blatant, even in the mainstream wash-out that passes for news.

So, what we need are solutions.

To begin, where as our problems nationally are bureaucratic in nature, bureaucracy is not the problem. Though it's taken me many years, I have come to accept that anarchy is absurd. It cannot exist in human society, since it is, by definition, truly anti-social, regardless of the niceties that the black and red kids try to give it. Suggesting any sort of order, which is a fundament of society (again, by definition), is automatically something other than anarchy. All things that are in existence today are expressions of some sort of order.

Unfortunately, it has been characteristic of "Western" thought to be anthrocentric, to the point of forgetting that we are, in fact, animals. That said, we are a certain type of animal. We are animals who have the social complexities of our ape ancestors and relatives, combined with cognitive and technological inheritance which we have advanced, in our own right. These have allowed us a singular position in this global system, but it has not freed us from that system.

But these are not the points that I am arguing in this post...at least not explicitly...

I would argue that the changes that we need, taking as granted that government form is a reflection of the popular culture, fall essentially into two categories: structure and focus. Since these exist in a dialectic relationship, separating one from the other and the effects of one on the other is impossible. Further, perhaps this is a somewhat egomaniacal, the intention of this post is not so much to present total ideas as it is to, hopefully, spur conversation and debate with anyone that reads this (so please, comments are more than welcomed). So, I will write a brief sketch of some of my ideas.

Focus:
Socialism is not a dirty word. Game theory is showing that the only way to insure maximum success is to minimize competition; meaning that, instead of competing, we cooperate. Sounds simple.

Simple conservation laws (the physical, not legal, kind) prove that the indefinitely expansionist economic model is fiction, not to mention bad fiction at that. Finitude means exactly that; limits exist, so equations must be balanced by us or they will be balanced for us (most likely in a way that is not so kind to us humans, or more specifically, since this country is my focus, to the US). In WWII, the Nazis planned to crash the British economy by flooding the streets with counterfeit currency...and yet we make money by making money? This concept of limits and balance within those limits applies to everything from our conception of medicine to our market models to education. BUT, balance does not mean stagnation.

Okay, this may seem to be a bit more directed at our culture, but as I typed above, it applies because of that...Celebrity should reward merit (by extension, legitimacy), not the other way around.

There are others, but these will do for now...

Structure:
First and foremost, to the extent that we as US citizens desire true democracy, or something that is a close approximation to it, we should do away with the Executive branch. It is more than possible to distribute its powers, as well as the all-important checks and balances, between the Legislative and Judicial branches. (If we want consolidated power, it should be in the hands of those most qualified to lead and rule...and megalomania is not a qualification.)

Being limited by necessity (see above), the nation-state model of the US as a single entity and "its states" as sub-level entities needs to be reevaluated. In fact, I think that one of the original conceptions of the US as a federation of interdependent states should be reexamined. The central federal government should handle universals: travel, trade, healthcare, education, communication, utilities, and defense (until it can be phased-out).

For the sake of keeping this brief, I'll leave these as being some of the changes, in an abstract form, that need to be and can be made.